MIXING & EFFECTS

Audio Input/Output Routing This feature is available only in Producer Edition

This section covers the I/O routing panel in the Mixer window.

    

    1. Mixer Menu
    2. Tracks Group Selector
    3. Solo Switch (activate to hear only the audio output from the selected mixer track)
    4. Mixer Tracks
    5. Track Panning
    6. Track Volume
    7. Master Track
    8. Insert Tracks
    9. Send Tracks
    10. External Effects Banks
    11. Mixer Track Properties
    12. Audio Input/Output Routing

N. Disk Recording Switch

O. Show Audio Input(I)/Output(O) Switch

P. Audio Input/Output Routing

 

The audio input/output panel (12) contains the I/O routing options and the recording switch.

Routing

The basic functionality of all mixer tracks lays in the concept of taking an input audio signal from one or more sources, processing it and then outputting the processed audio to another location.

By default, all insert tracks take the instruments assigned to them for input signal and output to the master track (and may output to one or more send tracks if set so). The send tracks can take the signal from the insert tracks and output to the master track. Finally, the master track outputs the resulting mixed signal to the audio card of your PC.

This scheme is easy to understand and is enough for most of the mixing tasks you will perform while creating simple melodies and loops. However, for bigger projects you may need to create more complex mixing chains, with groups and subgroups of mixer tracks. The audio input (N) and output (O) routing settings allow for such scenarios, so you can, for example, assign the output of one insert track to another one.

Users who use ASIO drivers for audio output can route the tracks to the various ASIO outputs their audio card provides. These can be outputs to the individual channels of a 5.1 surround system, hardware mp3 compressors, disk streaming outputs etc. Additional outputs appear also when using the FL Studio multi output VSTi connection.

Most of the ASIO drivers provide ASIO inputs for microphone, line in etc. as well. You can route such inputs to the mixer tracks. Note that the ASIO inputs will not replace but mix together with any input audio the track receives from other sources (instruments, other tracks etc.).

Limitations of routing:

1. Only one track at a time can output to the primary DirectSound driver (usually this is the master track). This limitation does not apply if you use ASIO for audio output.

2. FL Studio will disable certain routing choices if this would create a circular dependency (for example trying to route a track to itself).

3. Send tracks can not be routed to insert tracks.

4. None of the tracks can be routed to a send track. Instead, use the Send Levels (M) knobs to adjust the amount of signal sent from an insert track to the send tracks.

Prepare for Recording

The disk button (P) prepares a track for disk recording (to a *.WAV file).